On the issue of consciousness

1.  Why the physiology of consciousness matters

2.  Not reinventing the wheel

3.  The binding, real and imagined

4.  The fullness of conscious experience

1.

There is no such thing as the supernatural.  There is nothing beyond the sight of Science but the richness of our own mental experience.  Two points: that’s only because Science isn’t one of us and; the richness of mental experience IS available to the scientist, which is close enough, to be sure.  I leverage the humanity of the scientist quite a bit.

So; no stone tablets, no virgin birth, no golden tablets; as a matter of fact.  This is very helpful to aid the discerning eye in distinguishing between good grounded spirituality and the manipulations of politics for power.  “Spelling” bespeaks a conflict between politics for power and the truth, a long time ago; fake noos, hehehe.

Where Nietzsche suggests a will to power, Frankl suggests a will to meaning: i’m very happy my wife suggested i read Frankl as i’ve been feeling this will to meaning for some time now.  Shove the power; you know where.

Walking with the Great Spirit; experiencing the Tao; “going to Heaven” in the sense of jewish meditation and Arjun’s journey in the Mahabharata; being visited by an angel; “blown out:” all are suggestive of a particular cognitive experience.  By understanding these meditative experiences physiologically new meaning is granted notions like truth and … meaning. Global harmonization of neural function in the cortex has been observed in buddhist monks and has significant implications on how one might interpret our spiritual record.  Descriptions of mental experiences are necessarily figurative; parables are all we have.

Descriptions of mental experiences are necessarily figurative; parables are all we have.  Claims to literal truth are lies, plain and simple; no offence to anyone, humans and dogmas just work this way.  Commentaries generally can be seen as one’s burning ego lighting in a most complimentary fashion the original articulations of those with something to say.

It seems to me that Jesus Barabbas had a meditative flash where he was actually the Truth (unique in the realm of recorded meditative flashes as far as i can see) and, according to predictions, a community will have a similar flash; not an individual, a community.  Sounds weird, i know but; it’s just the way it works out.  Update: thinking about it, all current (Sept. 15, 2020) things considered, it makes more sense if there is no literal Jesus, neither Christ nor Barabbas.  Judas had a flash: he's been made out the bad guy cuz he was *thee* guy; politics as it is.  His flash was typical: now things make sense.

Now, look; a description of the meditative flash as experiencing truth is, scientifically speaking, a possibility.  Describing it that way 2000 years ago should have brought cultures together.  The argument between Gnostic and Orthodox christianity was an argument between figurative and literal interpretations respectively and; the literalists won.  The liars won.  The fundamentalists won.  The dogmatists won.  1700 years ago the Truth suffered a temporary setback; fake news won the day, and most of the next.

Maybe we have a problem with “Islamic fundamentalism” because we’ve been living under christian fundamentalism for 1700 years?  Maybe we have a problem with misogyny and colonialism because we’ve been living under a misogynist, colonialist structure for so long it surrounds us completely and we can’t see it?  Like asking a fish; "how’s the water?"

Waiting for the “pop” as the two halves of the vacuum chamber separate. … … Maybe the halves are too big?  Maybe THIS is our structural problem?  There is ample opportunity for meaning.

2.

I’m a pipe fitter.  I tried postsecondary technical at N.A.I.T. after high school but, i couldn’t do it; no study ethic.  I want you to know; i’m no expert on any academic stuff: i did get two undergraduate degrees from the U of A, in electrical engineering and biological sciences; by making a job of it, 8 hours a day.  I’m not well versed in the precise language of cognitive science nor the depth of the computational theory behind neural function.  I see the brain as a feeling machine; a feeling generator (experience in the moment) and a feeling recorder (remembered experience).  Feelings are used to drive action: feelings about motive and things around motive and goal and such.  The brain is a feeling machine: feel it!  We spend a lot of time learning what and how to not feel.

To the point: the problems of consciousness; the hard problem, the easy problem, the binding problem and, their existence as actual or imagined; are dealt with to the nth degree by others.  For the purposes of this discussion it’s enough to understand that the solution to the binding problem has to explain why we have one coherent experience of daily life; the solution to the hard problem explains why we have any experience at all and; the solution to the easy problem is what the brain is doing, directed or incidental, to make the first two happen.

None of that speaks specifically to the meditative flash i mentioned; the one that allegedly grounds human spirituality.  I’m talking about a new wheel.  As i parse the domain of conscious functionally i find a number of new wheels: talking about new wheels is difficult.

3.

I’ve been thinking about consciousness for a long time.  I’ve come to a place of particular interest; between the Pia Mater, the innermost layer of the meninges, and the surface of the cortex… 

…and i realize i’m not on the trail of consciousness generally but, of the tentative binding in particular.  The idea is that the coexistence of ideas is instantiated by a coherent electrotonic flow dynamic between the Pia mater and the surface of the cortex, or an adequate simulation there of.  When i say “coherent electrotonic flow dynamic” i mean a way for charged ions to move around in a continuous (fluid rather than stilted (i looked up “stilted” and found “angular” amongst literary stuff and i thought “dogmatic” and that works perfectly!)) fashion in response to electrotonic fields and concentration gradients, as opposed to chaotic or random motion.  A central feature of the idea is that reasoning and meditation are the brain feeling out the situation toward a coherence of electrotonic flow dynamics; i.e. a good idea (the “eurika” moment).

I’m considering a place of particular interest because i’m looking at a particular cognitive event; a meditative flash.  If dogmatic assertions are abandoned and what’s left is coherent then, hypothetically, a global event can occur over the whole cortex and one’s experience becomes “other worldly”; coherent electrotonic flows persist in the absence of or in spite of grounded visceral inputs and constitute personal meditative experience of some sort.  I ended up looking at the space between Pia mater and cortex because coherent flow doesn’t happen in firing neurons.  The more i think of it, the more i see this space, or simulation there of, as a chosen product of evolution; this feeling machine.

It is important to note, and a subject of much discussion in recent years, that the organism is bound fundamentally by bodily integrity; the unity of the corpus.  Generally, one might switch consideration from one to the other, as though they were mutually exclusive: they are not; the constancy of the one provides a platform for the other.  The tentative cognitive binding i find myself considering is not a requirement of living; not even of thinking: to make sense (understanding) is something we might strive for if we have time; and it leads to invention.

4.

Daily conscious experience is rich with colour and form and the rest, the tentative binding has almost none of it; it must be that qualitative experience is additive.  Personal identity and multiple personality disorder can be understood from a “control systems” perspective if there is a “driving function” like the migrating myoelectric complex in the stomach and the similar migrating complex in the heart.  From the same perspective; the flash can be seen as a delta function or similar and, the meditative experience as a very complex transient ringing of the system.

The fundamental qualia driver, the solution to the hard problem, remains elusive but; if i’m right about the meditative flash being global electrotonic harmonization, we can say it is at least present in electrotonic flow dynamics.  It might be as simple as the tension, compression, and shear experienced by any particle.  Understanding the human animal as a low energy particle might provide the basis of the summing, the ontological binding.  You have one example of what it is like to be something: how to extrapolate that?  At least to all humans.

It’s interesting to note: the space between cortex and Pia mater through time ostensibly presents a quasi-three dimensional wave chamber; practically, two spatial dimensions plus time.  Call it the noospace; the home of the noosphere.

How consciousness grounds spirituality

1.  The ubiquity of the meditative flash

2.  Christianity; literal vs. figurative

1.

Science is awesome; it provides me all the answers i need.  I was going to be atheist; in 1987 i thought i should finally put on the atheist’s mantle but, it seemed entirely natural to first have a look.  I couldn’t proclaim myself an atheist without first looking and seeing nothing but manipulation in the spiritual record.  There is indeed much of that in some of it: a lot of it is entirely well-meaning.

The question that i had to answer was; is there anything in nature that could be any of these “spiritual items?”  It was surprising how quickly obvious errors arose, not in the record but in our understanding of it.  Also surprising was how easy it is to overcome these errors.  Consider the idea of ghosts; there is nothing in the spiritual record that claims there are ghosts yet, here we are with weekly shows on Science channel about the paranormal.  Curiously; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lent a lot of credibility to certain spiritual deceptions.  So it doesn’t take long to get to the point of realizing there is nothing supernatural going on: a soul is a living body; there are no disembodied souls, a soul is an animated body, it’s as simple as that.  Sir Arthur was duped, like so many other people.

And what of “going to heaven” or “being visited by an angel” or even “the virgin birth of Christ?”  Now, i’ve had a meditative flash; i can tell you it was very much like going to Arcadia, from the Greek experience; i heard a voice; i saw a character that became two characters; i was inside the Trojan horse; i was trodden on by the entire roman army after being buried under cobblestones: a solid week of visions and if i were from another time i would indeed testify to my presence in those places.  I am from this time and, the experience doesn't even rate as data;…“anicdata.”  The way i see it; the goal for the spiritualist, the spirituality in each of us, is to achieve that predicted collective flash with little idea what it might look like.

2.

What does appear unique is the Christ event; going somewhere, being visited by someone, or even experiencing something (the Tao) is always the way; except for the one time, as far as i can see, when the one experiencing the flash actually claimed to be the someone who is visiting rather than the one experiencing some sort of visit or journey.  Update: No longer unique in presentation.

There is precedent for virgin birth in the stories of the Greeks; Athena from the mind of Zeus, like victory from the mind of a General.  The canonical gospels never struck me as reliable history so i began to consider “the Christ event.”

I was lucky; early days of the internet saw much free information: I found a digital copy of a letter by Origen; i can’t find it on the web these days, only allusions to it.  In it, this early church “father” makes an argument for removing the first name “Jesus” from “Jesus Barabbas.”  I don’t know if you’re familiar but, to put the name “Jesus Barabbas” next to “Jesus Christ” in that context profoundly changes the meaning.  The way i read this bit; the Jews present were for the most part his disciples, at least two of the 12 were women, and the question to choose was between them meeting again in Hebrew meditation (Jesus Christ as collective Truth) or them saving Jesus Barabbas.  All of Christ’s “body part in place of body part” parables make a lot more sense if Jesus himself was missing those parts, like a thief in roman times that finally had to go straight for fear of loosing another of the things you have two of: Christ available to the lowest of the low.  Update: I got nothin.

Seems Judas was particularly good at motivating a flash; i don’t think he was hung.  There is the Gospel of Judas Didymous Thomas; “didymous” and “thomas” both mean “twin,” one in Greek and the other in Aramaic.  I’ll wager that the gospel of Thomas is actually the gospel of Judas and Judas was shanghaied to India where he started the Mar Thoma church.  You can see ground for the “twin” label in “the Acts of Thomas.”

The popularity of early christianity, given that there are no supernatural events, is something that has to be explained.  No literal virgin birth, no water to wine; how did it get so popular?  Part of it’s early success i think was due to the cosmopolitan nature of mediterranean culture at that time and the cultural ubiquity of the meditative flash,“experiencing the Tao”, “blown out”, “going to heaven”, “being visited by an angel” and i think the promethean gift of fire and walking with the Great Spirit, in a figurative sense all come together in the Truth of Christ.  This would explain a philosophical movement toward christianity but, i don’t think that is sufficient to make it so popular as to compel a fake flash like Constantine’s.  

There has to be a more pragmatic plus to early christianity if it’s early success is to make sense.  There is a statement from Christ in the Gospel of Thomas; “this heaven shall roll away and so shall the next; the two become one and the one becomes two.”  Now, i get the impression that spirituality at that time was generally a yogic exercise.  King Yuddhister at one point in the Mahabharata speaks of how “every leaf on the tree that protects you is respectful.”  Mohammed in a contemporary story ensures a young boy have a tree for shelter; same motif.  Even Odysseus and Penelope were anchored by a tree.  If we relate the figurative imagery to the human body, we get practical core strengthening exercises; i’ll wager much of the success of the original Christianity was due to a coupling of strong spiritual and physical truth.

How grounded spirituality informs political considerations

1.  What we call spirituality

2.  The politics of ~1700 yrs ago

3.  The politics of today

1.

What we in North America call “spirituality” is actually colonialism and misogyny; new age spirituality is popular because old age spirituality isn’t actually spirituality.  Fundamentally; grounded spirituality is about non-literal “things.”  An idea, a feeling, words, discussions, meditations; this is the realm of real spirituality.  Real spirituality is necessarily figurative; we can’t talk literally about an idea or a feeling; spiritual considerations are simply not available in a physical, literal space.  Orthodox Churches are politics, not spirituality.  The Catholic Church has the keys to the kingdom on their flag; do they use them?  No.  Will they let me use them?  No.  Will i use them anyhow: damn straight!

“Religion” is about being bound by the Word.  By your word?  By thee Word?  Looks like both; definitely a dichotomy.  I ask the reader to consider a public servant that has sworn an oath to serve a group of people before the citizens the public service is sworn to serve.  Can you imagine the inequity of such a structure?  Can you recognize that inequity around you?  Can you imagine a nation’s motive to eliminate such inequity?  Then you can imagine nascent communism.

2.

1700 years ago, what is now Turkey was wallowing in ~300 yrs of Roman subjugation.  Around 70 B.C.E., Mithridates the 6th was losing the Mithridatic wars.  When Saul had his flash; seems to me a good and grounded flash; the imagery available to him was mithraic so, there was opportunity for mithraists 300 yrs later to take control of the political dynamic and, they did by turning figurative stories into literal.  That was a big mistake.  So, Mohammed saw paganism.  Orthodox apologists point out that there is no virgin birth in mithraism; i don’t know there isn’t but, i don’t need there to be because the virgin birth thing is explicable from the Greek, as i’ve mentioned.  What i find interesting is bullfighting: Why did bullfighting become popular in Spain, the place where there was a frontier between Christianity and Islam?  There’s a story there for sure.

Mithraism was popular among roman soldiers, probably because the losing side in the mithridatic wars supplied a lot of mercenaries to the roman empire.  The popularization of christianity, by Constantine’s testifying to a fake flash (fake news), and the subsequent literalization of its founding documents provided an opportunity for military type all-male groups to gain more power.  The oppression of women and the glorification of war and fascist colonialism found their way into christianity here.

And i gotta say; as i studied the issue, i got the impression that “Baal” was “owner” and “mithras” was “lawyer.”  On top of which we have the Antikythera mechanism; if you haven’t heard of it, check it out.  So, functionally, we had an environment very similar to today; spiritually, nothing has changed.  To predict an eclipse while the plebeians remain ignorant is power; similar to free market capitalism and family money in the place of social democracy (or, as i call it, fair and guided market capitalism) today.

3.

Today, each church has its all-male group.  We have a problem with misogyny because these all-male structures lack articulated mechanisms to prevent it.  From the Mahabharata, we are warned against conspiracy; from Haida lore, we are warned against tyrant/cohort structure; and from the Bible we males are told to leave our father and mother and become one with our wife, not one with an all-male group.  If one takes up a spiritual notion of gender then what is generally understood as a directive against homosexuality can be understood as a recommendation against conspiracy, against a joining of agencies.

By self-serving secret oath, these groups make meaningful democracy impossible.  The Chinese saw the heinous actions of these groups and went communist and; they guard against the dynamics that make these groups strong: one political party and if you want in, no affiliations to other groups.  Power in Canada has switched through the round, from Orangeman to Knight of Columbus to Freemason, for the duration i’ll wager.

How Science informs Meaning

1.  Motion and thought; place, meaning and genre

2.  You and me and trust

1.

Rodolfo Llinás wrote an excellent book about the evolution of the brain: “I of the vortex: from neurons to self.”  The author makes a compelling argument suggesting that the brain evolved to guide one’s motion through the world toward a viable anchorage.  I personally find this helpful and grounding because, i’ve come to understand my world view as a “semantic landscape.”  Every idea must have a coherent “inside,” it must be internally consistent and; a coherent functional relationships with “surrounding” ideas.  Where it is is what it does and it has its local semantic landscape.  To suggest that the brain is essentially a cartographer would miss the point of its being; to find a comfortable place.  Yes; the brain is a cartographer but, it’s essentially a comfort finder.  Evolution built a feeling machine to act as a comfort finder.

It’s fine that an idea should mean what it does with the ideas around it, that it should be where it is but; for one to consider the internal consistency of an idea they must step inside it; let it take the whole of the noospace.  I consider this a genre shift; a changing of the map: apparently, i can do only one map at a time.  That this is actually the case seems likely to me: there are errors of logic that entail failing to change out the map entirely.  I met these errors years ago, referred to as “category mistakes.”

2.

So, meaning is place.  Who i am is where i am.  If i were in your place, i would be exactly you.  To say, “if i were in that position i would blah blah blah” makes no sense at all.

I trust you.  I know that if i were in your place i would do as you do; exactly as you do.  Maybe i know something that could inform your motive; maybe likewise.